


don't

by WahlBuilder



Category: Mars: War Logs
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Autistic Technomancers, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Technomantic Culture, twenty headcanons in a trench coat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 23:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18020477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: After Roy leaves, Tenacity follows. He has to give Roy something. (He wants to give everything.)





	don't

**Author's Note:**

> Another of the Conduit stories. Connected to [fires](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17800724). (May or may not be connected to [disappear](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17808866), too.)  
> Tenacity/Roy/Innocence implied, as always.

It is fitting that he catches up with Roy where they first met all those years ago. He knew he would find Roy here; he felt it. Even though he hasn’t brought Temperance with him, he knew he would find Roy.

He doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to speculate, why Roy has come here, why Roy has come to this particular house—one of Tenacity’s hideouts. This one is occupied intermittently by another hunter, and she’s not here at this time of year.

Roy is in the closed-off backyard, where Tenacity decided, all those years ago, to teach him dirty fighting.

The sight of Roy’s back, in the sand-scraped vest-with-sleeves, steals Tenacity’s breath away. He knows Roy is aware of his presence: Roy’s fist closes on the crate he’s using as his perch.

Tenacity’s hasn’t come empty-handed.

He doesn’t know how the white ceramic shards could fit seamlessly together and _hold_ in two shapes, a mask and a staff. It is not for him to know; what matters now is that they are a bagful of those shards (what if one or several disappear? do they have to make a whole new mask, a whole new staff?). And he has been tasked with delivering them.

It takes him a few very long moments to find his voice to say: ‘Roy.’

‘Leave me the fuck alone.’

Roy sounds so emotionless, as though his voice is a recording— no, not even a recording, but a simulation.

Tenacity steps closer, and the shards in the bag rattle like bones. ‘I’ve brought you something. They say it’s yours alone.’

‘I left it.’

‘It’s still yours. They say it’s yours until the time comes to an end.’

‘I’m not that.’

_No, you are not_ , Tenacity thinks, looking at the haircut that Roy stubbornly maintains even though it gives him away, and the connectors on his temples that he doesn’t remove; the small pouch of salt on his belt. _You are not what they want you to be—you are just what you are._

Sometimes it feels like he doesn’t know Roy at all. He doesn’t know much _about_ Roy, mostly speculations, the cipher of scars on Roy’s body, the nightmares that disrupt Roy’s sleep, the way he flinches away from too much noise and his hands twitch as though he has to force himself to not press his palms to his ears.

He knows most of Roy’s scars. The terrible mangled whip-like—if the whip was razor wire—on his right shoulder. The massive crater-like thing just under his left collarbone, always pale and with snaking silver-blue branches. The one of his lower abdomen (he watched that one heal). The metallised burns on his forearms, his shoulders, giving Roy a quality of a work of metal art.

Tenacity has learnt that it takes a lot to leave a scar on a Technomancer’s body. Their physical form heals fast. A wonder of nature. Roy’s scars run deep.

Tenacity isn’t religious—but he _believes_. In the gods of the desert, in human cruelty and stupid hope, in human kindness, despite all, in pain that doesn’t end and in love that is limitless, the love that you get when you least deserve it. He believes in the mystery of scarred bodies seeking warmth in touch at night, in laying down your principles to save a human life.

Tenacity is a bad man, he knows that and doesn’t hide from it. That helps him recognise good people.

‘Is he angry with me?’

This sounds more like Roy—not because his tone has changed—it hasn’t—but because of the question itself. The universe’s physical constants must change before Roy stops measuring himself by Innocence.

‘He will never,’ Tenacity tells Roy. ‘He wants you to be at peace, that’s all. And your brother, too, he wants that, too. But that one, he’s certainly angry. You know, in his silent, archly way.’

‘I know.’

He wants to say, _I need you. I want you. I miss you. Come home._ But what right does he have? He hunts people for money; declarations of love are something he doesn’t deserve to have in his mouth.

_I can’t offer you much, and what I can, you don’t want._

_I’m sorry._

_Forgive me._

He can’t carry Roy’s burdens, his pain—and Roy doesn’t want Tenacity to carry him, that much Roy has made clear.

So they are stuck in a limbo, and making Roy feel cornered is the last thing Tenacity wants.

So, he has to step away. For good now, it seems. Stop fretting and drinking himself into oblivion because otherwise his mind spins all kinds of horrors about a man too stubborn and too different for the world to not try to subdue him. Stop fearing news of a renegade Technomancer with mismatched eyes. Just stop.

Love is a terrible thing.

He puts the bag down. He knows Roy is aware of it. It rattles on its own. ‘You know my stashes and the codes. Please take whatever you need, whenever you need it.’

He can’t conceive of being reduced to two (one-and-one, an inelegant number), much alone to being cut down to one. Years ago, he wouldn’t have imagined himself as more than one.

How things have changed.

‘Take care, _Roy bach_.’

He walks away—while he still can force himself to.


End file.
